Why I Had to Stop Loving Princeton Mom

I'm just going to put this out there: I have an unhealthy fascination with Princeton Mom. If she's on TV, I'm glued. I can quote favorite passages from major magazine profiles on her. I even bought the New York Post over The New York Times before boarding a cross-country flight earlier this year because she wrote a special column in it. (For the uninitiated, Princeton Mom—real name Susan Patton—is a 56-year-old, divorced Princeton graduate and mother of two who rose to Internet fame last year after penning a retro, sexist, elitist letter in the school's newspaper urging undergraduate women to bag a husband now lest they fall into spinsterdom after graduation.) As an unmarried, 29-year-old woman, I find PM's message oddly satisfying. My pleasure may be akin to the celebrity who gets a perverse thrill out of reading inane gossip site comments about her. If my harshest critic happens to be a self-promoting crackpot, then perhaps I'm doing just fine. Why PM, in particular, has stuck in my craw I'm really not sure (The Rules women don't quite do it for me in the same way.) Nevertheless she's filled a talking-head-I-love-to-hate void left open from the days when I would cut class in college to watch Elisabeth Hasselbeck spar with Rosie on The View.

Needless to say, when the chance to hear Princeton Mom talk at the Princeton Club in midtown last night arose, I went for it. (She's promoting her new-ish book, Marry Smart: Advice for Finding THE ONE, which, of course, I read.) In many ways, the event was exactly what I expected: a small, dignified reception room complete with PM at the podium spouting comments as infuriatingly outdated as the rest of her oeuvre. A sampling, in no particular order: "Women reach 30 and it's like they fall off a cliff"; "Your fertility won't wait, your career can"; Online dating is an "undignified way" to meet people. She also bragged—without a hint of irony—that there was particular interest in her books in Pakistan (a country if ever there was one where you really want your dating guide to be a hit). Then, there was this exchange (and I'm paraphrasing here, but only slightly, because I was too slack-jawed to grab my pen):

Man in his early sixties: Your advice is targeted at women. What advice do you have for men?

PM: Be careful who you sleep with because this date rape business has gotten really murky.

I should also mention here that PM made some caveats to her advice, which I liked: For one, she conceded that marriage and children are not necessarily the path to happiness. (However, should you want those things, you need to follow her edicts.) All of this in under an hour! Needless to say, I ate it up.

The whole evening would have been thoroughly satisfying had it not been for about 20 minutes in, when I began to survey the crowd: mostly female, mostly under 25, and judging by the amount of supportive nods, mostly fans. But, like, actual fans. (To be clear, no one officially declared themselves a huge fan, but I'd fully expected an entire room of hecklers.) In fact, this whole time, it never occurred to me that people might follow Princeton Mom in earnest—let alone be her groupies. I'm not sure how this didn't occur to me given her viral appeal, a fact she so artfully discussed by bragging that her op-Ed had gotten more than ten times the page views of a front-page New York Times story on the Newtown shootings. I wondered who these young women were, all of whom were clad in corporate-ready dresses, cardigans, and toting Longchamp bags. And I fought the urge to corner them after the question-and-answer portion and scream, "Don't listen to her!" (Which I might have done had I not had dinner reservations.)

And yet, for the first time, Princeton Mom actually succeeded in her efforts: She made me feel like a failure as a person. In buying her book, watching her TV segments, and now attending her speaking engagement, I was unintentionally supporting her and giving her credence. For all my nuanced understanding of irony, how had this escaped me? I hated the idea that my attendance—you know, someone with a few more years of life experience (who obviously has her shit together!)—only further validated PM's authority on the topic. And just like that, my love affair with Princeton Mom was cut short.